


Is There Something You Were Trying to Express?

by EstherRuth



Series: Habit [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe-Mob, Angst, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Forbidden Love, Half-Sibling Incest, Hurt/Comfort, Ned is not the greatest father, Parent-child relationships, Secret Relationship, The Starks are all alive and a crime family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:33:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24877753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EstherRuth/pseuds/EstherRuth
Summary: Carrying on a secret relationship can be difficult. Doing it for over ten years and with your own sister, no less, is even more complicated.---Jon and Sansa know their love is wrong. But with their family, it might be the only thing keeping them sane. Jon has a testy reunion with his father.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Series: Habit [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1794751
Comments: 18
Kudos: 116





	Is There Something You Were Trying to Express?

**Author's Note:**

> Angsty family conflict. Jon and Sansa both struggle with their parents and Ned (and to a lesser extent an off-screen Robb) don't come off great here y'all. Title of fic and series taken from the song "Habit" by Ought.

Carrying on a secret relationship can be difficult. Doing it for over ten years and with your own sister, no less, is even more complicated. Jon knows that Sansa is worth it; worth all this stress of possibly getting caught. Worth all the time spent plotting to steal moments together. Even worth having to stomach watching other men pursue her and listen to peoples’ incessant questioning as to why she _just hasn’t found the right man yet._ Of course, it’s not really like he had a choice once they were together the first time. He couldn’t have stopped if he wanted. Jon was helpless to Sansa and always would be.

Arya had found them out about five years ago. The rest of the family was supposed to be on vacation at their beach house. Sansa was in college then, and while she was on spring break, she’d told their father and her mother that she needed to catch up on schoolwork. It wasn’t hard for Jon to come up with an excuse though. Catelyn wouldn’t have wanted him there in the first place and his dad was perfectly content to let Jon out of any family excursions, no questions asked. They were supposed to have the house to themselves for the week, and Jon had fully intended to have Sansa on every flat surface in the place as they made the most of the freedom they had.

But then Arya had come home, apparently checking out of vacation early, and found Jon balls-deep inside Sansa on the kitchen counter. They really should have heard her coming into the house, but Arya moved like a cat or some assassin; deadly quiet. In retrospect, it’s remarkable with her skills that she hadn’t caught them sooner.

She had, of course, freaked out; screaming at the both of them as Sansa moved frantically to cover herself and Jon tried to shield her. Then Arya had grabbed an ash tray and thrown it at Jon’s head; blood ran down his face while he screamed back at her to _calm the fuck down!_

_CALM DOWN?!_ She screamed at him, furious tears in her eyes as he buttoned his pants and Sansa fled in tears to her bedroom. He’d never seen Arya so angry with him before. It’d changed their relationship forever.

It was strange, because Arya had always liked Jon better than Sansa. Jon had learned long ago to stay out of his sisters’ quarrels; _it’s a sisters’ thing_ , they’d told him and their other brothers, no man could understand the unique dynamic, supposedly. But he’d never known how true that _sisters’ thing_ was until then. Because Arya hated him and rushed to Sansa’s side. Told him he’d violated Sansa and how could he do this to her? Sansa had defended him, but it didn’t matter. Arya became so protective of Sansa and stopped talking to Jon entirely for nearly a year before Sansa forced her to talk with him over Christmas.

He’d learned, more from Sansa than Arya, that Arya had simply idolized him and seeing what he was doing with Sansa had caused him to fall off a pedestal dramatically. He’d been her favorite. Eventually they got back to an approximation of where they’d been before, but it was never quite the same. She still called him her favorite, but Jon suspected it wasn’t really true anymore. In time, she’d mostly come to terms with Jon and Sansa’s relationship, when she realized that no matter how angry she was with him, Jon was not going to apologize for being with Sansa. He apologized for being insensitive enough that she’d found them that way; but never would he apologize for his relationship with Sansa because he loved her. And Arya had come to realize they weren’t ending their relationship either. She still didn’t like it, but she accepted it, more or less. She’d complained sometimes: _you’re like an old married couple._ That always made Jon smile, because his commitment to Sansa was no less than if she were his wife.

And Arya hadn’t told anyone in the family. Mostly, she’d said, because it was too shameful and would break everyone’s hearts and Catelyn would kill Jon. Much as she despised him for what he’d done, she didn’t want him dead. She’d told Gendry, but Jon and Sansa accepted she needed to tell someone rather than carrying that weight around for them. And Gendry, luckily, could keep his mouth shut.

The point is no one else in the family knows. And given the ordeal it had been with Arya, and the fact that things with Arya were likely _better_ than they would have been with anyone else in the family; Jon is keen for him and Sansa to be together the rest of their lives in secret. But if it was hard to exist in the Stark household as Ned’s bastard from an affair, with a stepmother who wished he’d disappear, things were that much more uncomfortable because of what he’d been hiding since he was seventeen years old and Sansa sixteen.

And he also resented that his father never really defended him all that much to Catelyn. Let her treat him like an outcast. A dirty little secret she had to endure when it was Ned’s own fucking fault in the first place, not Jon’s. But Ned seemed to accept and allow Jon to be the one to suffer instead. Then, of course, there was the blatant favoritism for golden boy Robb. Just a year older than Jon, and constantly compared growing up. The favorite, the one who’d inherit their father’s position. And Jon? Well, he’d been raised to be Robb’s “right hand” which really just meant Robb’s lapdog.

And Jon had done it all like he was supposed to. So fucking desperate for approval. Thinking he could win the favor of his father and Robb if he worshipped the ground they walked on enough. But it would never be enough. Jon knew that now. And he was still pissed that Ned had essentially done everything he could to make Jon take the fall for Robb’s fuckup by going to prison. And Jon had agreed. Mostly because Robb’s wife was pregnant, and he didn’t think she deserved having a husband in prison. That was his choice and he’d made peace with it (mostly). But he’d also decided then and there that he was fucking done with doing Robb and his father’s bidding and dirty work. And they knew it now, too. Even though they still seemed to think he could be brought around. Not fucking happening. Honestly, if it weren’t for Sansa and their other siblings, he’d cut ties with Ned and Robb completely.

All this is to say it was quite the awkward reunion in the Stark household when Jon arrived after a week in the hotel. Really, he was just there to get his things and head back to the Ariel. The Starks were wealthy enough that all the adult children, even Jon, had lived in their own apartments or houses somewhere on the gigantic property (well, Jon and Sansa basically lived together, but only Arya knew about that). Now, Jon was getting a place outside Stark territory, and Sansa was coming with him. They’d begun working out how to explain their choice to live together away from the estate.

Catelyn didn’t want him there anyway, and Jon needed space. That was a start. Then, Sansa had a _legitimate_ job, and could help him make rent while he looked for work with a record. A misdemeanor, at least, but still a hindrance. Plus, Sansa wished to avoid any potential set-ups with Jaime Lannister her parents might attempt to surprise her with.

“I’m disappointed,” Ned told him, in his grave boss man voice while Jon packed away his things.

“Me too,” Jon said, clenching his jaw. His father’s brow furrowed but Jon wouldn’t elaborate. If Ned couldn’t put the fucking pieces together on his own by now, he never would, and Jon had no interest in helping him anymore.

“At least let me help you two with rent the first couple of months,” his father said softly.

“No,” Jon said sharply. Money from Ned meant one thing—strings. And Jon was done with it.

“Robb wanted to speak with you,” Ned told him.

Jon huffed out a breath. He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to gather himself before he did something he’d regret. “I talked to him earlier,” he said. And it was true. It hadn’t gone well, but he had.

“Oh, well, good.” His father’s voice was low and oddly tentative. Like he was waiting for the right moment to say something. Jon didn’t have the patience for it; whatever it was.

“Yeah, well, I’m headed out,” he said, zipping up his bag with finality.

He walked toward the door when his father spoke again: “Jon, wait.”

His whole body tensed. He wanted more than anything to ignore the request. But— _fucking hell_ —he was still his father. He stopped but stared at the floor; not looking back.

“I wish…I wish things had happened differently,” he said. Jon realized this was the closest he would get to an apology. He clenched his fist.

“Me too,” Jon breathed, repeating his words from earlier. He started to walk away when his father spoke again.

“Do you think there’s any way Sansa might be convinced to stay? Cat is distraught,” Ned said.

Jon’s jaw clenched as he began grinding his teeth. He looked back at his father then. “No, I don’t,” he said in a harsh voice he rarely used with his father. “I think if you were worried about running her off then you should have thought twice about treating her like a prized cow over the years, to be sold off to the highest bidder.”

“Jon—”

“But it’s a little late for that, isn’t it, Ned?” he asked. Usually, he didn’t call his father by his first name. But mentioning Sansa set him off.

It wasn’t just that Jon was jealous. It _wasn’t._ Part of it, sure. But it was more than that, because it was fucking degrading to use Sansa for his alliances. Sansa was no whore, and Jon all but calling her that was his own fuckup. But that didn’t change the fact that Ned did try to pimp her out like one. It’d hit him before, that this was the way this family sucked them both dry. It made him sick.

“Watch it, Jon,” his father warned, a dark look on his face. The kind he used to intimidate flunkies.

“Well, nice chat, Dad,” Jon said sharply and walked out, not looking back and slamming the door behind him.

\---

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sansa asked him, running her fingers through his hair.

He had his head laid on her breast, listening to her heartbeat. “No,” he murmured, turning further into her body. This was the way he liked to lose himself: in her. She was always soft and warm.

She sighed with contentment as Jon stroked soft circles along her side. “So, my mother called me today,” she told him.

“Hmm? And what did she have to say?”

“She cried,” Sansa said.

Jon huffed. “Big fucking surprise there.”

Jon felt Sansa slump partially beneath him, whether from exhaustion or exasperation, he wasn’t sure.

“She’s emotional.”

“She’s manipulative.”

“Maybe a bit,” Sansa conceded.

Sansa had always known how Catelyn felt about Jon, and how Jon, in turn, came to feel about her. Surprisingly, it didn’t cause as much tension between Jon and Sansa as one might think. Catelyn was Sansa’s mother, so of course she loved her, and Jon would expect no less. But she loved Jon too, and Jon was loath to put her in the middle. Some of it was for Sansa’s sake. But part of it was selfish too. Jon and Sansa were secretly together and if Catelyn sensed she was in a tug of war with Jon for Sansa’s love and loyalty, it would be a whole hell of a lot easier for her to catch on. She looked at Jon suspiciously anyway.

Most of the tension that Catelyn caused between Jon and Sansa, ironically enough, was over his stepmother’s treatment of Sansa. She liked to keep all her children snared in family obligation and guilt—and Sansa was the most susceptible of all of them. The fact of the matter was her tears were a weapon. On some level Sansa knew it too, but she was more patient and forgiving, more sensitive to others’ feelings, than Jon ever had been. He saw the way her mother wore her down, drained her energy. It pissed him off and he tried to make Sansa see it clearly. But he couldn’t begrudge Sansa having love for her mother or her desire to view her mother in a more favorable light than Jon thought the woman deserved. Still, he tried to encourage her to stand up for herself.

“You can’t keep letting her do this, Sans,” he told her.

“What am I supposed to do? Tell her to fuck off?”

“Well, maybe. Occasionally,” he said.

“I’m not built for that, Jon,” she said. He knew it was true. Sansa hated confrontation and preferred to deal with things passively. She was a people-pleaser and much like Jon, she had been desperate for her parents’ approval growing up. It wasn’t something she’d fully grown out of. (In truth, it was probably something Jon hadn’t fully grown out of either).

“Why don’t you just take a time out?” he suggested. Honestly, it was probably Jon’s desire to cut ties to his father and Robb coloring his advice, but a break seemed like everything they needed, as far as he was concerned. “Just take a week and don’t talk to her. I think you’d feel a whole hell of a lot better, Sansa.”

“If I do that, she’ll be pounding down my door two days in,” she said. How was it that, at 27 and 28 years old, their parents made both of them feel like they were still teenagers? It had to be some special talent Ned and Catelyn had.

“Then stay here,” he motioned to the hotel room. “You’re moving out soon anyway.”

She gave him a small grin. “I know what you’re up to,” she said, and he chuckled, buried his face in her neck and inhaled her scent. Let the scent calm him. Holding her, it was like everything else could stop existing.

**Author's Note:**

> *Ducks head* sorry to Ned and Robb fans. I don't hate them but I'm playing up some of the dysfunctional family dynamics. I kind of left it ambiguous in the first part of this series but Arya knows about Jon/Sansa. Next part will actually be a fluffier interlude between the regularly scheduled angst. I hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading <3.


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